Can’t say I’m a fan either. I saw it load in my Safari Top Pages and went… WTF is this website?? I mean no offense to who ever designed it, but it looks amateur, as others have said. The bevels/embossing on all the buttons, the colors, the repeating texture background, etc. It’s unnecessarily cluttered and bulky feeling, whereas a forum should feel smooth and the content should flow easily.
But then again, I’m a graphic designer, so it’s not like I do this all day every day or anything 
The site looks really bad for anything lower than 1440x900 res. I’m at work and the NYSpeed logo takes up a quarter of the screen and I can only see like 1 or two posts at a time.
The funny part is that they have been working on this skin for months. lol. Sorry, but it’s true. I remember you guys saying that a new skin was coming back in June or July. This couldn’t have taken that long.
Meh, just like every other forum skin changes I’ve ever seen, I’ll get used to it.
actually it did, and the reason someone invested dozens upon dozens of hours building it quite literally from scratch i guess is because that person thought that the site deserved better than a $30 template skin.
moreover, this is spare time stuff, you know, because it’s a hobby not a job (ie. for profit).
it’s fine not to love it immediately, however, what some people have done over the past 48 hours warrants a very significant apology to Josh for some remarkably disrespectful comments and accusations… the scale of which has eroded any courtesy that will be given to those in the future. the suggestion by some that post count or join date affords persons the right to comment as such is laughable. If that standard is not clear yet then perhaps we should put THAT in the header.
I’m liking the change:tup: I suppose I could find something to gripe about, but I won’t for I think these are nice changes…I really think there’s just a lot of the common overly-critical reactions that many NYSpeed have always shown. Yes, this can be refined and as all designs should…but so far good work fellas!
With the new skin, if one post has a huge image that stretches beyond the window, all of the following posts are then stretched that wide making you scroll across to read whatever someone wrote.
Just an FYI.
Thank you Bing. I will say that I personally have invested HOURS upon HOURS into this skin. Did it take months to complete? Nope. Do I treat this board like a full time job, sometimes, but it is not. I do not make a penny off of it, and that is saying more than the other admins that are LOTS of pennies invested into it. Josh has spent HOURS designing, tweaking, retweaking the design of this board. This is his ultimate view (minus some things that I veto’d based on vbulletin restrictions) and I really think that some individuals have been more than disrespectful. Some of you I even know personally and know to be better than what you were today. This is not a final decision that we are forcing down your throats. We came into this knowing that there would be negative feedback and positive feedback. We wanted criticism, but criticism that included suggestion and feedback on how to improve. I have received numerous PM’s, emails and phone calls from people that love the skin, however some people decided to take things to a ridiculous level and spend their day whining and bitching about changes. It has not gone unnoticed.
To all of the people that gave no feedback and just bitched up a storm causing a significant drama fest out of something that is very serious, thank you, your suggestions are no longer necessary. To those that have offered input, their time to help, or even just minor changes that would make the skin look better THANK YOU we will try and work with what you have offered to build this to be what you, the serious members want.
Anyone that would like to give serious feedback and offer suggestions, advice, help etc… You can pm me, email me at mgleeson@gmail.com or hell, give me a call say hi and I may just buy you a beer 548-0610
I am going to stress what bing said: THIS IS JUST A HOBBY TO US. WE DO NOT DO THIS FOR A LIVING OR MAKE A LIVING OFF OF IT. THIS COSTS ME TIME WITH MY FAMILY AND MY JOB AND THE ONLY REWARD THAT IS DERIVED IS THE COMMUNITY THAT WE HAVE HELPED TO BUILD.
The only thing that truly shames me from today is that people boiled the sponsorships down to us making a profit. Those people obviously do not know Bing, Josh, Howie, or myself very well. Sure our advertisers help to pay the bills, but the key word is help. Profit HA. If we even turned a profit, then divided that by hours invested I could only laugh at myself for working a job that pays less than standing on the thruway with a mug begging for change to cars speeding by. And that day has yet to come. Our advertisers are local business that are a part of this community and benefit us as much as we benefit them.
Good night all. Hopefully tomorrow brings something constructive to the table.
EDIT: why did it take months to go live if it did not take months to complete?? Because we moved servers twice, upgraded the software twice, added countless new features some noticeable, some not. Implemented things that will lead to new features down the road, and custom built some crazy shit into vbulletin that has never been done.
Ok wow, let me apologize for expressing my discontent with the “look and feel” of the new skin.
Although I still think it is unpleasant aesthetically, the fact that ONE person spent his FREE time to help better this board is a huge :tup:. If that doesn’t convey a “community” feel than idk what does.I though this was a skin we just slapped on, not a custom job.
A for effort, and i’m sure with some minor tweaks it will be much better.
I don’t think it’s really fair to criticize those who aren’t offering suggestions in regards to the overall design… I didn’t offer suggestions, because there are no concrete suggestions that can be offered, without me literally redesigning the entire site in my head and then listing out all of the changes I would suggest. At that point, I might as well charge you $30 and design the whole thing from scratch. Me saying “The quote button is horribly disproportionate text vs. imagery, and the emboss styling makes the quotation marks hard to distinguish. Plus there is something to be said about white space around both text and imagery that would help make the whole thing look more like a button instead of a warning sticker label” is one part in a thousand that I could make suggestions on, and that doesn’t give ANY helpful suggestions in relation to any other part of the design.
The feeling I’m getting from a lot of people’s responses is that it just… feels wrong. It feels bulky, or overburdened, or unnecessary. That’s the whole design tone. You can’t offer suggestions on a whole tone other than “it’s just not quite right.” That’s like asking your grandmother to give constructive criticisms as to why she doesn’t like the way a Bugatti looks. She might not be able to tell you “this line here is off, and the styling of the wheel arch is too similar to X,” but she can tell you “I just don’t think it looks good!”
I’m not trying to be negative. In fact, I know that I’ll get used to whatever design you’ve got going on (as will everyone else). Just trying to lend some input from someone who is mildly inconvenienced, as opposed to completely incensed like a lot of the people sound.
the work skin is completely useless on IE7, but the normal skin works fine.
I wasnt sure if the bugs were to be reported here or not.
llp message shows error, the avatar info area varys in size. similer to what clean baldy had going on.
:tup: to having options.
cass, don’t worry.
our comments were not necessary with reference to specific posts in this thread but in reference to posts that been made iin this or other threads that may or may not have been moderated by various members of the mod team over the last 48 hours.
if you read through this thread in isolation i can see how my and mike’s comments are out of context.
and just karter, this is not about opinions.
I’ll speak for some of the other people I’ve talked to that feel similarly to myself. Mike, I hope you understand we weren’t trying to undermine all the work you put in, as I’m sure it was substantial.
My main point was, numerous people have called for the old skin as an OPTION. No one undermined your work, but some people simply prefer it, for various reasons. We have been flat-out ignored all day, with no reason given. There is no rational explanation we can think of other than the new design is meant to hold more ads and make the owners more money. I practically begged for one when Onyx asked what more they could do and I replied with one line in size 1000 font, and got nothing. If there’s another explanation, we’d love to hear it. We are concerned because under Howie, public opinion was considered in making these types of decisions. Today, it just seems like all we got as a reponse was “shut up and deal with it.” Given the other dealings we’ve had with Onyx since the takeover, it seems a lot more like a dictatorship than before. Those of us that were around don’t want to see another HUK situation. I would bet that all of the comments you didn’t like would have gone away had we merely received a response that Yes, you would work with us on our request, or given the real reason why you would not.
Joe when we first got it as mods I was still using the default for weeks. Then I switched to the new one just so I could give insight and think it was the right thing to do. Anyhow now when I look at the old one I can’t believe I liked it over the new one. I think a few minor tweaks and the new one is going to be great.
This new one makes it harder to read with the colors for me at least.I prefer the old one.I have to concentrate to read this now.
While this skin isn’t something I would make myself, I think it looks good! I prefer this color combo to the old white, blue and black, it was too harsh on the eyes.
Thanks guys for all the hard work you put into the site!
i’d say i only miss the old skin just because it was easier on my old ass shitty computers. when i upgrade to my new laptop in a few months, i’ll probably like it a lot better.
i think it looks cool. i would just like it if i could select the old one solely for load time conservation.
^^ this is the reason that i miss the old version, my eyes have gone to shit lately and im like squinting and having to highlight some things to make them clearer (i plan on seeing my doctor asap anyway). Its just to much of the same color scheme. Im not saying hulk hogan the board up with red yellows whites blacks etc… but perhaps just tweak the colors a hare maybe tone down some of the shades of gray or make the text more of a contrasting color. Mike I know you and the others involved mean nothing but good things but is there a remote chance that with the Vb. software that the old skin can be a choice? If you guys need money to make this happen Id gladly paypal you a few bucks as im sure many others would as well. While i love the price of free Ive got no issue with payin a few bucks for something that can entertain me .
On a side note beer does sound good. And as I recall I think I still owe you one.
also, i realize this is unrelated, but i’ve done an entirely half assed job of searching and i can’t find anything. can anyone point me to a thread explaining how experience works? and leveling up? do we have to do some gold raids?